Those of you who are preparing to visit the land of the Ancient Olympics, where Alexander the Great, a Macedonian by birth, was not permitted to participate, beware!

Beware of the smooth words of Greek propaganda which, while lying to you, will intoxicate you with ancient Hellenic wonders and connect you to the Modern Greeks.

In northern Greece you will find Macedonia, a land now partitioned and occupied. Know that in 1912 Macedonia was invaded and occupied by Greek, Bulgarian and Serbian military forces and on August 10, 1913 under the shameful Bucharest Agreement, was permanently partitioned among them.

You may have heard that one part of Macedonia was liberated in 1945, and is now the Republic of Macedonia. Do you know that Greece has made every effort to force the Republic to change its name? Do you know that Greek chauvinism is hard at work destroying everything that is Macedonian?

Fourteen million tourists visit Greece every year, yet the Macedonian refugees who left Greece during the Greek Civil war of 1946 to 1949 are still not allowed to return, not even for a visit. Did you know that in 1948 thirty thousand children, between the ages of two and fourteen, were taken from their mothers, separated from their families and permanently exiled to foreign lands throughout the world? Did you know that fifty-five years have passed and the doors for these innocents are still closed? Did you know that Greece is responsible for exiling these children to live out their lives in foreign lands, to grow old away from their parents and siblings, never able to return, not even for a visit? Is this the Greece that portrays itself as the cradle of Democracy?

Know that Macedonia is the land of the Macedonian people, which not too long ago was taken from them. When you visit Macedonia, know that there are people living there without the most basic human rights. When you walk on Macedonian soil know that you are walking on graves without markers, without names, without a sign. This is the land of the thousands who have been tortured in Greek concentration camps, murdered because of their race, exiled and forcibly assimilated into the Greek fold. This is the land of the neglected and forgotten people.

The honour of the Olympic games belongs to the Ancients not to the Modern Greeks. The Ancients were a different people who would not allow foreigners to participate in their games. Even Alexander the Great of Macedonia was not allowed to participate because by birth he was not one of them.

Know that in today's Greece, especially in Macedonia, if you are not a Greek by birth you have no right to own land. The lands and homes of the Macedonian people were annexed by the Greek State and awarded to foreigners from Asia Minor who in the 1920's were relocated to Macedonia. These foreigners, whose populations have now grown, have declared themselves to be the legal heirs of Macedonia and claim that the real Macedonians do not exist.

Behind the veil of the Ancient Olympics are hidden many truths: the spilled blood of Macedonian heroes, the horror of the Greek occupation, the forced assimilation and tyranny of the Greek regimes. At the hands of the Greeks, many Macedonians have endured torture, imprisonment, killings, isolation, hatred and lack of ethnic and basic human rights. These are the forgotten tragedies of the Macedonian people.

Greek chauvinism has planted the seeds of hatred and turned the Greek people into an army of antagonists. To this day, Macedonians live in fear of retribution and don't dare reveal themselves. To this day there are no laws to stop Greek chauvinism.

When you visit the lands of the Ancient Olympics remember the Macedonians.

They were sent into exile and scattered to every corner of the world. For more than half a century the Macedonian Diaspora cast out of Greece during the country’s bloody civil war have been barred from returning to their homeland.

Now the army of elderly refugees has been granted a temporary homecoming, if not the return of the money and property seized during the savage conflict that pitted them against their fellow countrymen.

Greece is finally facing up to its history of ‘ethnic cleansing’ and beginning the process of extending full rights to its minorities, who faced decades of persecution and discrimination under successive oppressive regimes and right-wing dictatorships.

The move comes as the pro-European government of Prime Minister Costas Simitis pushes Greece gingerly toward a more diverse, tolerant, and some might say European and democratic society. Nevertheless, it will be a hard task to shake off the pervasive belief in the ethnic ‘purity’ of ‘true Greeks’.

Even the return of the Macedonian community is temporary. The concession, announced by the Greek deputy foreign minister Andreas Loverdos in July, only allows them to enter Greece between August 10 and October 30 and limits their stay to a maximum of 20 days.

For many the homecoming itself is a slap in the face. Macedonian political activists were refused at the border and there were rumours of a blacklist. Those whose passports contained the old Macedonian-language names of their villages were turned away and told to get new passports listing the new Greek names.

Only 300 of the 100,000 Macedonians banished from Greece have returned. One hundred and fifty were turned away and many more cancelled their travel plans when they heard about the border problems.

For those Macedonians who have managed to cross the border in recent weeks, there have been emotional reunions with family members, and visits to villages and former homes. For others, however, there has been only heartache. Former residents of the ethnic Macedonian village formerly known as D’mbeni discovered the Greek army had not only changed the name, but bulldozed all the buildings, including the graveyard, where their relatives and ancestors were buried.

During the Nazi occupation of Greece, more than 10,000 Macedonians, who were Greek citizens, became resistance fighters in the communist-controlled National Popular Liberation Army (ELAS). Following liberation, they found themselves embroiled in a civil war against the pro-royalist Greek Democratic National Army (EDES). In 1949 ELAS finally surrendered, bringing the war, which had lasted nearly five years, to an end.

Greece’s collective memory of the civil war remains keen; strong enough that this army of elderly immigrants is still considered a threat to the security of the Greek Republic. The returning Macedonians have also made Greece aware of another uncomfortable reality: not all Greeks speak Greek and are Greek Orthodox Christian.

Panayote Dimitras, spokesman for the Greek branch of Helsinki Monitor, a human rights group, said: "Greek society has been educated to believe that if you are not Greek-speaking and a Greek Orthodox Christian then you are not a good Greek or a real Greek. They have nothing to fear from these people. They might have come and said strong words against Greece. So what? We are a strong democracy. It was about time for these people to return."

Pavlos Voskopulos, of the Rainbow political party of ethnic Macedonians in Greece, adds: "Anyone expressing a different ethnic, national or linguistic identity is often stigmatised in the public and in the media. They are accused of being anti-Greek."

According to the US State Department’s 2002 Human Rights report on Greece: "Laws restrictive of freedom of speech remained in force, and some legal restrictions and administrative obstacles on freedom of religion persisted..."

According to researchers, minorities in Greece number between 5% and 10% of the population, or between 500,000 and one million people. These include not only ethnic Macedonians, but Gypsies, Turks, Romanian-speaking Vlachs, indigenous Albanians, and Pomaks: Muslims with Koranic names and traditions, who speak an archaic dialect of Bulgarian.

Officially, however, only a ‘Muslim minority’ is recognised, created by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne which ended war with Turkey. Because it makes no distinction between Turkish, Gypsy and Pomak Muslims, the Greek state has been able to manipulate the Muslims’ identities according to country’s political interest.

The restrictions on Pomaks’ movement, for example, continued until 1995. The Simitis government finally struck down Article 19 of the constitution in 1998, which allowed the state to revoke the citizenship of "non-ethnic Greeks" who travelled abroad without permission.

But there are still laws on the books which prevent Pomaks from living outside their traditional villages, although they are not enforced.

Voskopulos, of the Rainbow party, said: "We are talking about a united Europe, a European identity. Everyone knows how important it is to respect diversity. Today to discriminate against people at such a broad level is completely unacceptable."

SCARS OF CIVIL WAR

THE Greek Civil War, which broke out in 1946, was fought between British and American-backed government forces and communist guerrillas.

The two main forces that had resisted the Nazi occupation - the communist-controlled National Liberation Front-National Popular Liberation Army (EAM-ELAS) and the Greek Democratic National Army (EDES) - came into conflict after EAM-ELAS set up a provisional government that rejected the Greek king Constantine (right) and his government-in-exile.

Ethnic Slav-speaking Macedonians, related to kin in socialist Yugoslavia to the north, fought for autonomy and aligned with the leftist insurgents. To deny the communists local support, more than 700,000 villagers were forcibly evacuated from mountains and dumped into miserable camps near towns.

In total, around 3,000 government executions were recorded during the conflict.

By the time the civil war ended in 1949, with the surrender of the communist guerrillas, some 100,000 people were dead and one million displaced.

Ethnic Macedonians were singled out for reprisals because of their support for the leftists. About 60,000 Macedonians fled, including 28,000 children, across the border to Yugoslavia, the Republic of Macedonia and the new People’s Republic of Bulgaria. Others went as far as Australia, Canada and the US. A 1982 law allowed war refugees to return to Greece, but only the ethnic Greeks.